MSFS: My 2 Year Review

[MarcG 2,974]

Back in August 2020 watching the pre release youtube streams was a great time, the hope & promise of what this Simulation may one day become was incredible, it looked the bees knees. So after 2 years of development, where have we go too? As ever these are my thoughts, you may agree or disagree but please be respectful, not everyone shares the same opinion as you 🙂

The Good;
That probably should read as "The Awesomeness" , let's face it, having the entire world at your fingertips with an abundance of default aircraft (not to mention modded ones) is absolutely fantastic. The real time live streaming data meaning you can go anywhere and almost do anything is great, the Live Weather for the most past adds to the realism alongside what most consider pretty decent physics and this area is ever improving. The graphics are amazing, I've shown many non-flight simmers pictures of MSFS and I'm often met with "when did you go up in that plane?" which shows the realistic levels we're dealing with here. VR, although basic (more on that later) really adds to the immersion of a real flight, I have on many occasion got "lost" in the air thinking I'm in a real plane - it is that good!
The modding community is simply huge, after the initial quick Hack 'N Slash conversions form other flight sims we're now really beginning to see the full in-depth quality of dedicated Planes, Airports and scenery mods. Having been involved with simulations that include modding support I don't think I've ever seen one with as many on offer from the community as this one, you can quite literally get lost over at Flightsim.to just browsing for stuff!
Working Title coming in to deal with the GARMIN is a major highlight of the Sim and a wise move by the developers who realised they needed help in this area, the aforementioned Live Weather for the most part is very real/life like to the point if I look out my window then I can see roughly the same in game.....and of course who could forget the first time they went to find their own House, albeit nothing like the real thing but the fact that this is even possible is testament to the Blackshark AI software in place. Towns & Cities are represented very closely, photogrammetry can make these stand out and the hundreds of POIs can be amazingly detailed to their real life counterpart.
The default Planes are decent enough, some have gradually improved to be more like their real life cousins and it's great to get new official planes at a small cost every few months, the dedication to increasing the product line through free Updates shouldn't go amiss. SU11 will offer a ton of extra new free content as well, that should not be sniffed at. The WUs themselves have gradually improved, getting new DEMs for favourite countries is great and really adds to the detail across the globe.

The Good essentially could go on forever, but it's not all roses & pretty flowers and that's why some things have left a soru taste in these first two years of development....

The Bad;
Like The Good there's a lot of The Bad, I'll start with VR support which is simply not good at all. Who remembers the ill fated "MSFS VR support will only be for the Reverb G2 initially" nonsense? It was just that, absolute nonsense. It was plain to anyone with half a brain that if it worked via WMR then it would work with all WMR devices not just the G2, this was obviously a marketing link up with HP to try and sell the product, much like Item Placements in TV shows it was designed to lure in unsuspecting buyers and it backfired - badly! Which leads us to the initial VR release in December of 2020, again it was only supposed to be for WMR supported devices but Jorg and his team rushed through SteamVR support as well. Now this wasn't a bad thing at all, it meant that practically most VR users would be able to use it at the same time which was a good. What wasn't good was the blatantly obvious rushed implementation "just to appease" the VR users - remember they were never going to include VR support at all until the community spoke up, Asobo had zero experience going by their previous titles so you can't blame them for being apprehensive but still...not to offer VR support in 2020 from the very start in a Simulation was an incredible short sighted and naive decision...and it doesn't stop there. Once they release VR it went ignored whilst they concentrated on the Xbox release, although they claimed to have a "VR Team" (multiple times) they weren't doing much until an entire year past before VR Controller support was added, which wasn't great either and online Polls suggest not may use it even to this day. Basic VR features went left answered, the Mirror on the desktop is a 10minute job to show One Eye not both (as I've been told by a dedicated VR coder), World Scale has only just been added in the form of SU10 (due out soon at time of writing), this is a feature that really should've been released in the first few months not 18+months later - but that's all we've got, two features in almost 2 years from a company that never wanted VR, to this day they clearly lack an understanding of VR development which IMO is a great shame - but at least it works, just in a very basic way. Like bringing in WT for the GARMIN, I pray for the say they bring in a dedicated team for VR to really oush it on, the excellent OpenXR Toolkit shows what can be done by modders in their spare time and really this isn't the only area a dedicated team should come in....

ATC & AI, ok so WT are supposedly working on ATC in the future, good news. Having never used this before in any flight sim I'm not the best one to comment on it, but going by the continuous shouting in the forums it's a big area that needs a serious overhaul and sooner rather than later and that leads us to the AI. Now AI is something I do know about, I was a self confessed AI expert with RFactor2 from many years of diving into text files and racing against them. But of course plane AI and racing AI are two worlds apart, so again I don't have great knowledge on this but from reading from those more in the know this is another area that requires a dedicated team, not something that Asobo are showing much interest in themselves which begs the question in what year will this get looked at? Thankfully the modding community are all of this and doing their best to give a us a decent experience, I find it a shame that such big areas are left for the community to "fix" though, that doesn't sit well with me.

Sim Updates, something we all like but something that fills some of us with dread. For a long time since the very first update I wasn't looking forward to them, I was much more apprehensive about what they would break and that's where Asobo/MS really haven't got much better (at time of writing SU10 beta is in a decent shape aside performance issues). That's what really grinds me gears with this setup, Jorg smiles and pampers to the cameras in Q&As about how they fix all regressions when that is a blatant lie. VR users still suffering from the ill fated SU7 update almost a year on, other albeit minor regressions have still not gone fixed and even bugs reported during the Alpha stages are still present. Their Quality Control was at one time simply appalling, the fact that POIs wouldn't appear until you were practically on top of them because they hadn't tested the LODs correctly was such a schoolboy error it should never of seen the light of day, Jorgs ambition to release monthly updates with no testing then 1 weeks testing then 2 weeks testing would clearly never work, it's taken too long for him to realise that system was destined to fail. Ok the Beta periods are much better now, a far cry from the pathetic initial attempts, it just amazes me that they never thought about having a beta testing period from the very start of this title - this humongous title - naivety in full flow in my eyes.

Communication, it's very meh, ok the Q&As offer up some insight but they've become a marketing exercise to tick a box. Martial clearly doesn't want to do them, Sebs sections are interesting but Jorgs smile and pretend everythings ok is tiresome. The questions are rarely asked correctly and the language barrier at times shows this is in the responses we get, the infamous "what lightning in clear skies bug?" still makes me shiver to this day, proof at the time that bug reports were simply not getting through to the dev team even though they said they read every Zendesk ticket. The weekly snapshots are just another marketing tactic, other developers have proven that Monthly Roadmap type updates work very well but alas this won't ever happen here. The Official forums are a joke at times, the unpaid mods supposedly pass on information to the dev team, bug reports get a "Logged" status but still go unfixed months/years later, the beta periods (which again have improved) could still be much better, there is only One Way communication with very very little coming back directly from the Devs. Having been a part of many Beta Periods for a whole host of different games/sims over the years I'm sorry to say this Sim is still the worst in that regard, but they are slowly improving so there is hope.

The Ugly;
SU5 was a catastrophe, all geared towards the Xbox release it practically brought PC users down to their knees. But I'm not gonna focus too much on those negatives, things since have improved and it appears some lessons have been learnt (read: some). But it will remain in history as one of the worst Game Updates of all time and that's not a good title to have, which leads me to SU7.... I mean on what planet, what planet in the universe, did they think they could release this update which 100% broke TrackIR use and severely affected VR users?! I beggars belief that no one on the inside said "wait, we can't release it like this". This is where my faith in Jorg diminished and he simply became a Puppet for Corporates and the cameras to smile and wave in Q&As, 5/6 weeks later we got a Patch, 9months on there are still issues as a direct result of SU7 that go ignored. This simply wasn't and still isn't good enough, sure bugs happen, game breaking issues happen (remember the Flaps fiasco that took a week until they bothered to communicate with the community!), it's just so incredibly frustrating that they continually break stuff and this makes me fearful for SU11 which has a solid release date set, they simply do not have any Quality Control worthy or someone up top is saying "ignore the issues release anyway" and that is troublesome.
Don't get me wrong here, Jorg has done a fantastic job setting this whole thing up, getting it off the ground, getting it on Xbox, bringing in the Partnerships and licenses but that's where it ends for me. I think he should continue to do that side of things but step aside and let a more competent Manager come in who can control the Development path in a more sensible fashion, someone who knows what they're doing as Jorg - to me - looks like he's lost half the time, do what you're good at but be man enough to say "I need help" or if it's a direct action from above then they need to lay off him somewhat ,Yes this is a product that needs to sell, it's on Xbox and needs to work correctly, but it needs a clearer vision for the development team, I fear Asobo are doing what they're told and not doing what they think is best.

Conclusion;
Yeah sorry went a bit negative overall (I've been around gaming/sims long enough to see the flaws unfortunately!), but it's not all bad trust me. MSFS is a fantastic Simulation/Game whatever you wanna call or do with it, it's given me hundreds of hours of pleasure amongst the moments of madness and hair pulling. Having only been a Flight Sim fan from the side for many years (my background is Car Racing sims) I only dabbled with other Flight Sims, so when this title came out and I could go anywhere anytime it was practically all I ever wanted. I've learnt so much, from simple flying to GARMIN use and my physics knowledge of planes is improving (I'm no expert which is why I've left that portion out of this review). The promise of the Sim is also great, there's the untapped Boat Simulation aspect that is starting to take shape, if they improved the Road System imagine the possibilities of that!? We could have car racing sims directly linked to each real world track, the Euro Truck Sim guys could port over and create full blown truck driving mods, the potential is incredible and that's the most exciting part, screw the Metaverse, we could well have a MSverse on our hands here!

Overall the title is simply excellent, but going forward it needs a lot of TLC in a lot of areas ,it's been a bumpy first two years, but it should be and could be a very exciting future if the visions and realism are met by "the management" at MS - fingers crossed.

(Edit: gah, 4,900 characters too long for a Steam Review 😄)

Edited August 29, 2022 by MarcG

[Jude Bradley 659]

What annoys me most is

1) UI - not very intuitive at all. Try setting up hardware profiles per aircraft. X-Plane has a very easy intuitive interface for this.

2) When any aircraft has a patch, it takes about 20 minutes or more to compile.

[cianpars 1,165]

One of my biggest bugbears is that I can't move addons I am not using out of the community folder and onto a spare drive without getting the dreaded message that "your organization does not allow you to move files here". Is that type of security really necessary if you can't use msfs without being logged into your account anyway?

My biggest annoyance to date was when ms decided to completely delete msfs along with all my addons (which took days to restore) when I stupidly agreed to sign up to their beta (I won't be making that mistake again).  This was exacerbated by the fact that I had been unable to back up my community folder due to the "your organization does not allow you" issue mentioned above.

As for updates, I'm never quite sure whether they are going to load from the sim, from the market place or from X Box Live as they have arrived in all different ways previously and the fact that you have to rename/delete the community folder, rolling cache and manual caches along with remembering to check the content manager as the update might actually be in there. And all this presupposes that the update did download without looping, crashing or just getting stuck at X%.

It just leaves me with the feeling that I am dealing with a bunch of amateurs at times rather than the world's biggest multi billion dollar software provider.

[sidfadc 1,344]

I will sum it up and say I've never experienced a piece of software with this level of support.  I pay 120 quid for the premium deluxe, since then I’ve seen 10 World updates, 9 sim updates and loads of free stuff.  

We can nitpick all day long, but the sim is a technological marvel in its own right and is getting better with every FREE update.

[mrueedi 702]

2 hours ago, MarcG said:

remember they were never going to include VR support at all until the community spoke up, Asobo had zero experience going by their previous titles so you can't blame them for being apprehensive but still

This is not true. Asobo even developped the showcase hololens applications for Microsoft in 2016. Quote:

"Each device will arrive packed with a trio of games, two of which were created by French developer Asobo Studio. Those titles are the platform action game Young Conker and the murder mystery Fragments. The third game rounding out the trio is RoboRaid, produced by Microsoft itself, making Asobo the only external developer with hands-on for game development on HoloLens."

And, as Hololens and MWR share the same platform, we can even say that Asobo was a forerunner regarding this technology...

[him225 51]

Has there been any substantial improvement or addition to the core sim in 2 years? The scenery area enhancements in updates can as well be categorised as dlc. Can't understand why in this time with numerous updates, no mouse yoke or AI atleast as good as fsx got added.

[Johan217 49]

Being able to fly over my home area and recognize everyday landmarks (our local supermarket and even the fastfood restaurant we go to on Thursdays) straight-out-of-the-box makes it impossible for me to go back to any other flightsim.

The majority of my annoyances are related to the UI - e.g. map filters being reset, not being able to set a registration number per aircraft, missing keyboard assignments, useless tooltips...

[MarcG 2,974]

38 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

This is not true. Asobo even developped the showcase hololens applications for Microsoft in 2016. Quote:

"Each device will arrive packed with a trio of games, two of which were created by French developer Asobo Studio. Those titles are the platform action game Young Conker and the murder mystery Fragments. The third game rounding out the trio is RoboRaid, produced by Microsoft itself, making Asobo the only external developer with hands-on for game development on HoloLens."

And, as Hololens and MWR share the same platform, we can even say that Asobo was a forerunner regarding this technology...

My opening sentence in that quote is fact, I may indeed have it wrong for the second part which begs the questions ; If they had developed for VR in the past, why were they so reluctant to add it in the first place to MSFS? and secondly, why are they so poor at coding for it now?

Edited August 29, 2022 by MarcG

[Bobsk8 12,700]

Started flying sims in the late 80's. MSFS is the best thing I have ever seen in a home sim. 

[pstrub 998]

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

One of my biggest bugbears is that I can't move addons I am not using out of the community folder and onto a spare drive without getting the dreaded message that "your organization does not allow you to move files here". Is that type of security really necessary if you can't use msfs without being logged into your account anyway?

I'm pretty sure this can be resolved by adjusting the file / folder permissions in windows. I've never seen this kind of message, but I installed the MSFS main folder on a separate SSD where it's less protected than in the Windows default folder. Right-click the install folder, select the Security tab, and press the Advanced button. I'll have to look up the details later, but probably you can find instructions for this on the internet anyway.

What happens when you try to move addons on the same disk?

 

[mrueedi 702]

 

37 minutes ago, MarcG said:

My opening sentence in that quote is fact, I may indeed have it wrong for the second part which begs the questions ; If they had developed for VR in the past, why were they so reluctant to add it in the first place to MSFS? and secondly, why are they so poor at coding for it now?

Sorry to crush your second fact... but why do you say "remember they were never going to include VR support at all until the community spoke up"?

In Juli 2020, before release, VR was announced: 

Microsoft Flight Simulator becomes top-selling game on Steam in less than a day | PCGamesN

Personally I enjoy VR in MSFS immensely. For me it is close to flawless and the added benefit is like the difference between visting places in google street view vs. visit places in person.

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by mrueedi

[Fiorentoni 4,224]

I've been very critical myself in the past, but at the end of the day I'll have to admit they learned a lot from their (many) mistakes. Remember when there was no beta for sim updates and everyone had to say a prayer before downloading that the sim update won't delete all his controls, turn his graphic settings into the opposite, get stuck in an endless "checking for updates" loop, make clouds looking even worse, completely wreck some essential part of the aerodynamics and/or CTD for no good reason?
The sim has been notably stable the past 6 months, and this is what I like the most.

[cianpars 1,165]

24 minutes ago, pstrub said:

I'm pretty sure this can be resolved by adjusting the file / folder permissions in windows. I've never seen this kind of message, but I installed the MSFS main folder on a separate SSD where it's less protected than in the Windows default folder. Right-click the install folder, select the Security tab, and press the Advanced button. I'll have to look up the details later, but probably you can find instructions for this on the internet anyway.

What happens when you try to move addons on the same disk?

 

Pretty sure I've tried that, but I will have another play with it later.  MSFS is installed on my 1TB M2 E Drive whilst W11 is on my 250 GB SSD C drive.  I also have a spare 250 GB SSD G drive with just a few bits and bobs on it.

I do have a little prog on my PC (Take Ownership) that normally allows me to get around permission issues, but it won't get around this one.

Edited August 29, 2022 by cianpars

[abrams_tank 7,408]

11 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

The sim has been notably stable the past 6 months, and this is what I like the most.

A large reason why MSFS has been stable the  last 6 months is because we pushed for the open beta.  The irony is, after all the hard work pushing for an open beta, some people want to go back to a closed private beta.

Like what? The closed private betas were not nearly as effective as the last 3 open betas.

[MarcG 2,974]

31 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

 

Sorry to crush your second fact... but why do you say "remember they were never going to include VR support at all until the community spoke up"?

In Juli 2020, before release, VR was announced: 

Microsoft Flight Simulator becomes top-selling game on Steam in less than a day | PCGamesN

Personally I enjoy VR in MSFS immensely. For me it is close to flawless and the added benefit is like the difference between visting places in google street view vs. visit places in person.

 

https://uploadvr.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-no-vr/
https://uploadvr.com/ms-flight-sim-2020-vr-high-priority/

Like I said it wasn't coming, then the community spoke up and they rushed the release 🙂

In an interview with Jord Neumann, head of the development of Microsoft Flight Simulation,  said the following about VR.

“Right after the E3 trailer came out there was a lot of people making that exact assumption, that ‘Oh yeah, this better be supporting VR right from the get go.’ It honestly wasn’t our plan,” Jorg Neumann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, told AVSIM. “But we are listening, and we heard it, so we will try our darnedest to make it happen. Whether or not we’re going to pull it off for launch, we can’t commit to that at this point in time, but we are aware of the desire, and given that we genuinely want to make the sim that simmers want, we will try to prioritise that over other things.”

Edited August 29, 2022 by MarcG